The Sapphiri

by R Gene Curtis

  I started playing soccer because I knew Mom loved it. At first I wasn’t very good, but I kept working at it. And after a while, I realized that the more I practiced, the better I got. And the better I got, the more I enjoyed it.

  Maybe being a princess will be like that. Maybe I’ll learn how to talk to and lead people. Maybe people here will like me. Maybe I’ll forget about kissing Karl. There’s no way to know except to try.

  “Well?” I ask.

  Karl still has his arm around Somrusee. It’s hard to forget about him when he’s standing right next to me.

  Quint sighs. “It sure is beautiful tonight, but I don’t know what’s going on down there.”

  “I don’t either,” I say. “Any ideas how we can find out?” I can’t start being a leader until I know what I’m trying to lead.

  But Quint doesn’t have a chance to answer. A knife flies past us, barely missing Karl’s head. I don’t even think before I leave my feet and hit the dirt, which is what everyone else does as well.

  Another knife flies over us, but then nothing. No footsteps, no shouts, no sounds. Dirt is up my nose, filling my lungs with a musty, garden-center smell. I can’t hear anything except for the rapid breathing of the people next to me. I spit dirt out of my mouth and push myself onto my knees.

  Quint grunts and starts to crawl towards the bushes, away from the clearing.

  Karl follows, and then Somrusee. The night remains still, and so I follow. I’m not brave enough to stand up, but I don’t army crawl like the others. Once we’re all concealed in the bushes, we stare at each other without saying anything until the sun has completely set. Somrusee cuddles next to Karl. Quint crouches at the edge, straining his ears and scanning the horizon, and I sit alone, not sure how to interpret the attack.

  Finally, Quint stands up very slowly. No new knives fly. Crouching and moving cautiously, he ventures back into the clearing. When he returns, he’s holding one of the knives.

  “This is a knife from the city guard,” he says. “I’m not sure why they threw it at us, but I don’t see any sign of them now. They must have decided we weren’t a threat and headed back to the city.”

  “Do you think the guards have taken over the city?” I ask. I’m not sure what I expected to find here, but a bunch of people bent on killing me wasn’t it. What if Arujan is here? Could he already have a bunch of lackeys here?

  Quint turns the knife over in his hand and thinks for a minute before responding. “When I was with them, the city guard loved planning rebellions. It’s an old pastime that’s been around a hundred years. I bet they put one of their plans into practice when they heard Wynn was gone. If they are patrolling the perimeter of the city and throwing knives at intruders, my guess is they’re running the government.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of those plans,” Karl says, “and I’ve seen many of the architects killed. Wynn let some of them slide, but he always took out the good ones.”

  “When you talk about being a man of Wynn, I want to strangle you,” Quint says sharply, glaring at Karl. “It’s hard to remember you’re a good guy now.”

  “He’s always been a good guy!” Somrusee says and kisses his cheek.

  “We need a strategy,” Karl says, thankfully refocusing the group. He’s such a good leader. He thinks quickly on his feet and he stays focused. “We need to find out who is running the show, and if Arujan is behind it.”

  I open my mouth to say something, to compliment Karl on his leadership, but it’s Quint who speaks over me. “I have a friend who can help us. And I know how we can get there without being seen.”

  “Impossible,” Somrusee says. “All the gates are guarded.”

  “Don’t you worry, girl. I know all this city’s secrets.” Quint shakes his head and laughs. “Come with me and see.”

  And with that, it is Quint who leads us to a small trail that takes us to the southern part of the city. He has a plan to find out what is going on in the city, and that’s good. I think it’s good anyway. Somrusee and Karl are going along with it.

  But after about a mile, I find myself walking next to Quint, desperately wanting to know how he feels about this whole thing. Careful to make it look authentic, I brush his swinging arm and let his feelings fill me momentarily. He’s confident, relieved to be home. Such a contrast to my own feelings.

  Quint catches my eye in the moonlight. “Don’t worry Princess. We’ll get information and we’ll make a plan.”

  I don’t say anything, wishing I could hold onto his arm and let his confidence seep into me the whole way to the city. We’ll make a plan. I’ll make a plan.

  It isn’t long before we reach the southern part of the city where the city sewage empties.

  “We won’t find guards here,” Quint says.

  If I were a guard, I wouldn’t be here either. The smell is thick, and it gets into my lungs and fills my entire body. I gag and nearly lose my dinner. I hold my breath and nearly pass out. I don’t know if one can die from smells, but I may die before Quint’s scenery tour through the sewage ends.

  But we don’t die. Quint makes us climb down into the sewer, and we tiptoe on top of a long pipe until we reach the end and climb out into a side street. We’re in the city, and no one fell into the sewage. I wonder if Somrusee is impressed.

  “My friend lives close by,” Quint whispers. He hesitates, and I wish I could see his face. I reach out to touch his arm, but then I remember how Karl told me Wynn was always touching him. Quint will notice if I can’t keep my hands off him. If he knows about hemazury, he might think I’m overstepping my bounds, and if he doesn’t know about hemazury, he’ll think I’m a creep. I pull my hand back.

  “I’ll go see if my friend is home,” Quint says. “Karu, come with me.”

  Karl follows Quint across the street, and Somrusee and I fall into the shadows.

  Somehow, I didn’t think being a leader would mean hiding in the shadows while my friends did all the work.

  I bend down and get my hands dirty on the rough road. Thanks to the large number of blue flowers back at Goluken’s house, I have a full supply of blue blood again. Blue blood and dirty hands. That’s something I can do right now. I’m ready for anything.

  My concentration oscillates between the dirt and the doorway. The back and forth is natural for me now, and it’s hard to remember a time when it wasn’t easy. In that way, hemazury is like soccer—the skills I’ve practiced have become a natural extension. Like dribbling a soccer ball.

  The door cracks open, and I see a thin female figure backlit by a dim light.

  “Hello?” Her voice is soft, timid.

  “Vinnie?”

  At the sound of Quint’s voice, the thin girl flies out of the house and throws her arms around him. “You’re alive!” she squeals. “I thought you were dead. They told us everyone who went with Wynn was dead. Including the god himself. Is it true? Who is your friend? When did you get here?”

  Her voice echoes around the quiet street, bouncing off the other silent houses. I glance around nervously—I’m not sure the noise is a good idea.

  Quint puts his finger on her lips and the street goes quiet again. “This is my friend, Karu,” he whispers.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Karu,” she says, whispering now, but still loud enough for us to hear her clearly. “Did you also fight with the great Wynn?”

  Karl nods. “Yes, my lady. I was once a man of Wynn. But, this time I helped to defeat the man you call a god.”

  “It’s true then,” Vinnie laughs, and she kisses Quint. “You did it.”

  Quint laughs and kisses Vinnie again.

  Somrusee taps me on the shoulder. “Guards aren’t allowed to have girlfriends,” she whispers.

  I look back at the couple. Kissing again. It all comes together for me: the ease at which Quint navigated the sewer pipe, his shyness about his friend. Things happened in this city Wynn didn’t know about. How is a ruler who isn’t super paranoid supposed to keep order if an obsessed Azure
an king couldn’t?

  Quint pulls back and laughs. “Vinnie. Can we come in? I have other friends here, too.”

  “Other friends?”

  “Yes. I need to talk to you. We just got here.”

  She hesitates and steps forward so I can make out her features better. She looks so young. Not that I’m old—I have no idea what the date is or whether I’ve had my twentieth birthday yet. Still, this girl can’t be too much older than sixteen. “But, what about everyone here?”

  “I need your help. Wynn is gone, and so are his rules.”

  Vinnie hesitates, but she nods. Her eyes grow wide when Somrusee and I hurry across the street and join them. She bites her lip and closes the door quickly behind us.

  The five of us fill the entryway completely. A narrow, dark hall stretches in front of us. Light from four open doors seeps into the hall, giving off enough light to see a set of stairs leading up to a small landing with four more doors. The stairs come straight from a horror movie—half of them are missing and the others are crooked or cracked. A rope hangs next to the stairs, apparently the handrail. I hope whomever I’m here to talk to isn’t up those stairs. And that we can get information quickly and then get out.

  A child peeks his head out of one of the upstairs rooms and yells. Several more heads appear out of different rooms.

  “How many people are here?” I whisper to Karl in English.

  “One family in each room,” he whispers back. Somrusee glares at him—she hates it when we speak English.

  “Most of the houses are like this,” Karl whispers.

  One family in each room. Millions of Sattah citizens, and they’re all packed into little rooms. Millions of them. With sewage running down the gutters. All because of their Azurean god who is dead now.

  Vinnie heads up the stairs and we follow, slowly and carefully. After just a few stairs, I can see into the upstairs rooms. There are men, women, and children in each one. They watch us warily, their silent eyes dark and unreadable. One mother turns out the lights and hushes her children, but others just stare at us.

  I stare back at them, my heart sinking with each step, each gaze. How am I going to help these people? They need food and water! They need hygiene and cosmetics. They need laws and government and process. And all they have is a twenty-year-old girl.

  Vinnie leads us to the room at the end of the hall. A tall man greets us with a silent bow.

  “This is my father,” Vinnie says in a timid voice.

  A girl huddles behind the man, perhaps about twelve. She’s small, but she already has her girlish figure. We walk into the room, but there is no place to sit. This room is smaller than the bathroom in my Seattle house! A dim candle burns in one corner, providing the only light, though it’s now blocked by the considerable number of bodies now crammed inside.

  “Who are you?” the man says. There are no doors and so his words echo down the hall to the other seven rooms. The man keeps his voice low, though it doesn’t help.

  How can these people live like this?

  Wynn. They had no choice.

  Somehow when everyone went into the room, I ended up at the back. I push the air out of my lungs and squeeze forward. My hands brush Karl’s arm as I move past him. His muscles are shaped and solid under my fingers, but he feels sad. Is he sad about the living quarters? About having come to places like this to kill?

  “I’m Ria.” I trip as I pass Karl and nearly fall into Vinnie’s father. I manage to right myself, though I now stand way too close to someone I’ve just met. Karl moves from behind me, and I’m able to back up a step and regain my composure.

  The man stares at me, and I look back at him. He isn’t as old as I first thought. The lines around his eyes are lines of fatigue, the lines of someone who works too hard and is paid too little.

  “Ria. Is that supposed to mean something? I’ve met a lot of girls named Ria. What are you doing in my house?”

  “Have you heard of the Blue Princess?” I ask. Karl said some people in the city told legends of a lost princess who would return.

  He scoffs. “Many people run the streets these days, trying to take control of the city. Is that what you are? You’re wasting your time here. You can’t have our house. I’ll fight for it. It’s all we have. It’s all we’ve had since Wynn brought us here.”

  “I don’t want your house.” Imagine fighting for this place! “We’re just trying to find someone we know who can help us get information.”

  His eyes narrow. “How do you know Vinnie?”

  “I’ve never seen her before, father,” Vinnie says.

  The man spins and slaps his daughter across the cheek. She doesn’t cry out, though she nearly falls over. Quint catches her.

  “Don’t you touch my daughter!” The man pulls a knife from his pocket. I hear footsteps downstairs. This is going badly. Contention. It’s the force that follows Azureans; it’s what Dynd said could destroy me.

  “Look.” I let the words tumble out, not sure what else to do. “The king before Wynn took over. Togan. I’m his daughter, and I’m here to make things right. I’m an Azurean.”

  The footsteps on the stairs stop. Vinnie’s father lets his knife clatter to the floor. His hands go up, his eyes open wide, and he backs away from me into the wall.

  Whatever I was expecting, the fear etched into his face wasn’t it.

  “An Azurean?” he whispers, and his voice is one of terror.

  “Daddy, I didn’t know,” Vinnie whimpers from Quint’s arms.

  “A good one,” I manage to say, unnerved by the terror in his eyes.

  He has some cuts on his hand I could heal. I reach out to touch his arm.

  He screams and drops to the floor in the fetal position.

  “Get away! Don’t touch me!” he yells.

  I hear screams downstairs, and the front door slams as people run out of the building.

  I look at Quint. They hate me. He shrugs and hugs Vinnie.

  I don’t know what to do next, and so I stand there awkwardly towering over the man’s scrunched up form.

  No one speaks.

  I reach towards the man, and he screams again. Vinnie’s sister has moved next to her, and she clings to her sister’s arm so tightly that her fingers draw blood.

  “Please. Help us?” Karl asks.

  “Don’t hurt me. Please. I’ll tell you anything you need to know,” the man whimpers.

  I almost have the words formulated in my mind on what to ask when Vinnie starts talking. “Daddy! This is the soldier I told you about. Quint! He’s alive, and he has friends and he’s brought them back. He survived, and he says Wynn really is dead and his friends need to know what is happening in the city. I knew you’d be mad, but they didn’t have anywhere else to go. So, I let them in, Daddy. They can’t stay on the streets. Not with the patrols going now. No one told me the girl was an Azurean.”

  “Patrols? On the streets?” Quint asks. “Those are new.”

  “Yes!” Vinnie says. “The men, they said Wynn was dead and there were no more Azureans, and they took over the city. People tried to fight them, but they killed anyone who resisted. They said no one was allowed out of their homes until everything was secure. We’ve been in here for over a week. We’re out of food, but everyone is out of food. Tina downstairs has some kids who are really sick, but she can’t go out to get anything for them because of the patrols. I’m so glad you didn’t see any, Quint, when you got here because that would have been awful and…”

  Quint smiles and puts his fingers on her lips. I’m guessing he does that a lot. I’m not sure why we even bothered coming upstairs if we could have got everything we needed from Vinnie.

  “Do you know who is leading the men?” Quint asks. “Have you heard of a man named Arujan?”

  “One of the guards is leading. I haven’t seen him, but I heard he took over the castle. I have heard rumors of Arujan, but I don’t think he is leading directly. They have most of the guard on their side, too, and the
others are all captured. It is…”

  “Where are they being held? The ones captured, I mean.”

  “Inside the main barracks. In the mess hall. I snuck over there to get food, but there wasn’t food in there. Just a whole bunch of men, and they were all tied up and couldn’t do anything. I didn’t find any food. I so wanted to find something, and often the barracks are the best place to steal…”

  Quint smiles again. “I knew I could count on you, Vinnie. We’ll have to leave now, but I will try and get you some food. You take care of your father.”

  I look back at the father. He is staring at Vinnie with smoke coming out of his eyes.

  “You snuck out of the house?” he asks.

  “Don’t lay a hand on her,” I tell him. No girl deserves to be hit by her father. Ever. “If I hear that you so much as touch her, I’ll come back here and make sure you regret it.”

  Karl is the first out the door, and Somrusee and I are not far behind. I glance behind me. Vinnie is quiet, but not because of Quint’s finger on her lips this time. I look away, fighting a strange feeling of jealousy and sadness. She may talk without thinking, but a man cares about her.

  My head jerks up as I feel a knife slide into my back. The pain is sudden and severe, and unfortunately familiar. My hand darts back and I take the knife from my attacker by breaking his fingers. Healing the wound is almost second nature and doesn’t take more than a minute. When I’m done, I heal Vinnie’s father’s hand and give him his knife back.

  “Careful,” I say. “You might need this.”

  He doesn’t take the knife but looks at me in shock while he backs away. He shakes his head and then collapses into the corner of the room and sobs. I drop the knife and hurry away, happy to be done with that information-gathering session.

  If Arujan really is behind this rebellion, we’re going to be dealing with an organized, sophisticated attack. And, we’re not going to see Arujan himself until it’s too late.